The Deficiencies of Homeschool vs. The Deficiencies of Public School

I'm a writer, almost everything I write ends up as an essay. This essay started out as an email to a fellow home-school mom as a follow up to a short conversation we had at our home-school co-op last week. Noticing the wide disparities in reading and writing ability among a class of 5-8 year old's, we engaged in a brief discussion about whether or not, as home-school moms, we are doing an adequate job instructing our children in basic skills. Some home-school children read and write early and others just begin to read and right at 7 or even 8 years old. Others may struggle for several more years. It's the 7 and 8 year old late bloomers that we were discussing that day. As part of that conversation the question arose in my mind, "Is it evidence of educational neglect if an 7 or 8 year old is just beginning to learn to read and write?"

Public School parents often view home-school parents as "out of the mainstream" so-to-speak, but they aren't so different that they don't find themselves comparing their kids basic skills to their kids peers. Unfortunately, we are all guilty of that. As I pondered this question I evaluated it by making just these kinds of comparisons, after all my son is just barely 7, and he is just now learning to read and write. In comparison, there are home-school peers of his who are significantly ahead of him in these skills and some who seem to be behind him. Likely, he would be behind his public school peers in these areas at this time. Does that stress me out? Sometimes, but not for the right reasons. Comparisons are funny that way, they are rarely made for the right reasons.

My son began writing his letters and numbers at 6, and not at 3 and 4 like so many other American kids in pre-k programs, and his progress in language is slow. His handwriting is neat but slow, and he can't write in small print. Despite these challenges he practices daily now without stressing over the copy work and I am happy with his progress. His reading is slow, and he must sound out many simple words still, but he is progressing and that is what matters to me. I feel confident that he is at the perfect developmental stage for both reading and writing and I have added more direct instructional methods as he has been able to handle them without stress. I feel content in his abilities and progress.

There would be some, maybe even a great many people, who would not feel the same about a 7 year old being at a beginning level in reading. Some may observe this and jump to the conclusion that there is some degree of educational neglect in my home, but as a home-school mom I made a choice not to push reading and writing as young as the public schools do. I made a choice not to use the same methodologies, curriculum, and lesson plans as the public schools do. I made that choice based on my own experience, research, and desires for my sons development. I made these choices based on my belief that there are other more valuable types of learning that can and should be done with kids between the ages of 4 and 7 then using direct instructional curriculum to teach them to read and write. Clearly that choice would naturally result in my son being behind his public school peers (in some areas, ahead in others) at 7, but I don't believe that means he will be behind them in 2 years.

It is logical that there is great diversity within home-school families, much more than the public school classroom, and that the reasons that families home-school vary widely, their personal beliefs about education and how it should progress differ, their instructional models differ, their curriculum differ, but the overall statistical evidence is that in the end as a group home-schooled kids perform as well or better then their public school peers. Are their failures in home-school? Certainly, but they are not more serious than those failures that take place in public school. Overall it comes down to choices. I'm sure that there is some level of educational neglect among home-school families, but I don't think it's higher than the national averages of public school kids who struggle and/or fail in the public education system because of poor home environments and/or the deficiencies and failures of their public education methodologies.

I think a person might judge the effectiveness of one home-school environment over another depending largely on their own unique experience within their local public school. A person in an under performing public school is more acquainted with the examples of education failure and neglect that happen in public schools across the country, however, a person whose children attend school in an affluent area in an affluent state, where their kids are surrounded by peers who largely grow up in stable intact families, experience the best of the best public school has to offer nationally. Thus judgments made about the effectiveness of home-school, which are largely comparative in nature, will differ as widely as do the educational outcomes in public schools. I had my older son in such a school district with the kind of excellent teachers those districts attract, for all of his foundational years, and he has a solid foundation, and for the most part I was satisfied, but not fully.

What I've learned from my exposure to education as a parent, teacher, then a political policy advocate in education, and through my research and study of the issues facing our education systems in America is that there are deficiencies in public school institutions that are no less serious in the way they affect the development of thought, and morals, as well as the development of problem solving skills and independent learning. I believe much of what we see wrong with society today either stems from or is compounded by these deficiencies in public education. As Abraham Lincoln said, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” -- Not only does this principle truth extend to the civil government, but the government of the family and most importantly the government of self.

In respect to the government of self, the transmission of morals, the development of character, and the development of independent thought, that I believe home-school is superior to public school. I love this quote from Thomas Jefferson that contains what people of his time believed the purpose for education was:

"The objects of this primary education are to give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve by reading, his morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed. To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens, being then the objects of education in the primary schools, whether private or public, in them should be taught reading, writing and numerical arithmetic, the elements of mensuration...and the outlines of geography and history.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (August 4, 1818)

As you can see much of what makes up a quality education deals with character traits that are not based in skills alone. I've highlighted some of these such as, problem solving, independent thought, articulate expression of independent ideas, the improvement of ones morals and the subsequent behaviors, the faithfulness to ones "social relations," i.e. duty to God, family, community, and nation, and finally the ability to instruct (to teach others, first of which is their own families) others their rights and duties.

It is these fundamentals you find that the purpose of education is not revealed by mere skill. Education is about the development of a human being. What that human being is able to accomplish academically is reliant upon the character that is forged, character is not forged through academic pursuit alone. As a society we are often dismayed by the level of general ignorance that seems a glaring evidence of the failure of American education, but we will not succeed at growing well educated youth in a society where the mass of its citizens are lacking in sound moral character, mature thought, self-restraint and selfless duty to a greater good.

A Developmentally Appropriate Education: Early ED

When I ask young mothers who are feeling drawn to homeschool why they want to homeschool, one reason stands out, they want to preserve the innocence of their children and make learning joyful. 

It is not hard to notice that a growing number of parents are following their intuition which is telling them that there is something very wrong happening in formal education today and that it is their job to save their children. Not all of these new homeschool parents can explain exactly why they feel homeschool calling to them, but they feel confident enough that they can provide what their young children need better than our educational institutions. This is good. What is not good is when, out of ignorance, well meaning parents simply copy the public school model at home without understanding that it's not just pernicious social influences within the education systems that are dangerous to children but the order and structure of how and when academic skills are taught that is causing harm.

One of the questions most asked by new homeschool parents is about what curriculum to use for their young child just starting out in homeschool. In this blog post I hope to impart some sound advise on how to build a developmentally appropriate approach to education in your home. With this knowledge you will be able to recognize what to teach and when to teach it and your search for good resources and curriculum to help you meet your goals will not seem as daunting.

What Public Schools Are Doing Wrong:

Our formal systems of education today use instructional models based on standards and testing requirements that are not developmentally appropriate. This means that the standard requirements that have been set and the type of instruction that is delivered to meet those requirements are not fitted to the developmental needs appropriate to the age of the student. In simple terms, our public schools teach the wrong skills at the wrong age and in so doing they stifle essential stages of cognitive development.

All modern state led education initiatives such as, NCLB, Race to the Top, and now Common Core, are built on the pernicious beliefs that education is a race—and that the earlier you start, the earlier you finish. They assume that learning follows the same principles at all age levels—ignoring the science of brain development and the fact that academic skills, which in their logical complexity and difficulty, are not suited to all stages of brain development. Thus we see schools trying to teach algebraic concepts to five year old's and structured writing skills to 1st graders, while time in their seats in direct instruction is continually increasing and the stress of standardized testing dogs them every year they are in school.

How is a Developmentally Appropriate Education Different:

In a developmentally appropriate education the question isn't what curriculum to use when a child is five years old, but rather what should I teach and how should I teach it. Resources like apps, games, manipulatives, and curriculum can be helpful in teaching your children the foundations of education; reading, writing, and arithmetic, but more important than all of these components is an understanding of how children learn and the basics of human development science.

In a developmentally appropriate classroom (home), children are busy taking care of plants and animals, experimenting with sand and water, drawing and painting, listening to songs and stories, and engaging in dynamic play. It is hard to believe that these young children can learn more from work sheets than they do from engaging in these age-appropriate activities. For home instruction to be superior to public school one must first free their educational philosophies from the cage of public school instruction and build a dynamic developmentally appropriate learning environment for their home.

Learning for young children should always start as play. Children should learn almost entirely through play and physical work up to the age of 6-7, and remain a component of education through elementary school. Those calling for hours of direct academic instruction of the young don’t seem to appreciate that math and reading are complex skills acquired in stages related to age. Children will acquire these skills more easily and more soundly if their lessons accord with the developmental sequence that parallels their cognitive development. Don't start too early on concepts your child’s brain is simply not yet ready for. If you wait for the right developmental stage you will discover that teaching a child reading, writing, and arithmetic will not be as hard or stressful for either of you. There are some exceptions with children who have serious learning challenges, such as a child who is dyslexic, but for struggling learner it is even more imperative that you do not push direct instruction and book work too early because their needs will require multi-sensory and systematic approaches at the right age.

What is most important in Early Ed is not a “rigorous” education but rather an enjoyable one. For young children learning should be fun, an education where creativity is cultivated, and curiosity is not squashed. The environment for learning is more important than the curriculum and teaching methods more important than resources. Don't stress yourself out, ignore the public schools standards and methods, and remember that a healthy happy child can learn what they need to know at any age (and much more quickly at the appropriate developmental phase) so there is no reason to be in a race or comparing your child to other children. 

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats

MY READ FIRST LIST:

Here I would recommend some important reading: "How Children Learn" by John Holt, "The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents" by Peter Grey Ph.D., Much Too Early, By DAVID ELKIND, and study Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development, there are many sources for this as his work is foundational to our understanding of how children learn, here is a summary. And finally, I recommend that you and your spouse begin ordering your homeschool using principles taught by Nicholeen Peck in her book: "Parenting A House United: Changing Children's Hearts and Behaviors by Teaching Self-Government"

The Heritage Foundation: Common Core Standards’ Devastating Impact on Literary Study and Analytical Thinking

Relax and Have Fun, and Good Luck,

My Treasure Trove of Education Resources for Early Ed instruction

Here are the apps I like the most (they are in the apple app store):

• Endless ABC
• Endless Reader
• Endless Numbers
• Phonics Farm from 22Learn
• TallyTots
• Bob Books Apps
• Quick Math Jr.
• Phonogram Sounds: All About Learning Press
• Duck Duck Moose Apps: all the apps in this family of early ed apps are great the ones that you start with are
• Fish HD
• Reading HD
• Park Math
• Letter School App: This is a handwriting app that has the Handwriting Without Tears font as well as two other standard programs.
• MakeChange App: For learning money
• TT Clock: For learning time

Activities that help prepare a child prepare for reading and math:

• Leaf Frog Alphabet Magnet Toy
• Leap Frog "Letter Factory" DVD (other Leap Frog Videos)
• Word World program on PBS (Streams on Netflix)
• Read out loud to them!
• Doing Puzzles
• Learning Patterns (string beads in patterns), they make large wooden beads for toddlers
• Coloring; some toddlers won’t tolerate coloring and building things, painting, or clay would be better.
• Cut & Paste activities (and other small motor activities), Legos words for fine motor skills as well.
• Connect the dots; again, some toddlers and young children, especially kids who are likely dyslexic will not tolerate this kind of activity.
• Storytelling Activities
• School House Rock: all of the old stuff

Games we Love:

• Sequence for Kids
• Monopoly for Kids
• Rummy Card Games
• "Chunks: The Incredible Word Building Game" by Smart Kids: (for beginning readers; age 6)
• Bananagrams: You can use this for lots of early learning activities and you don't have to play the intended game. Early on I would have Charlie put a set of random letters together and we would try to sound out the word he made. Most of the time the words were a jumble of sounds, but it was funny and helped him understand that letters need to be placed in the order with vowels to make sounds and words we can understand.
• Learning Resources "Pop for Letters" game: All of their games are fun.

Curriculums Worth Having (just in case they seem ready before 6 or 7 years, I used some of these at 4 years old):

• “Parenting: A House United” by Nicholeen Peck (and her children’s books that go with the method)
• Explode the Code Primers
• Handwriting Without Tears
• All About Reading & All About Spelling: Level 1
• Horizon Math: Level 1
• Math Manipulatives, such as, base ten blocks, cuisenaire rods, abacus, teaching clock
• Math Inspirations Method

True Education

“Gaining knowledge is one thing, and applying it, quite another. Wisdom is the right application of knowledge, and true education--the education for which the Church stands--is the application of knowledge to the development of a noble and Godlike character" ~ David O. McKay (Conference Report, Apr. 1968)

Hyper-Schooling is Killing My Kid! What Can be Done?

A study, released Nov. 30th in the Journal of Medicine and Sport, found that the more time kids in 1st Grade "spent sitting and the less time they spent being physically active, the fewer gains they made in reading in the two following years. In first grade, a lot of sedentary time and no running around also had a negative impact on their ability to do math." (Read about it in Time Magazine) The findings in this study are not a great surprise to anyone who has taken time to read up on the available human development science with affect upon early educational development, and yet, the U.S. school systems and political leadership have invented successive "school reform" initiatives over the past decades promising improved academic attainment and creating an increasingly destructive educational environment for America's youngest students.

Concerned parents, teachers and community leaders who follow education "reform" closely are beginning to ask questions about why local schools, state boards, and the Federal DOE consistently ignore the warnings from studies and experts, and instead demand more and more instructional time, seat work, and testing at younger ages. Brenda Vosik, the director of the Nebraska Family Policy Forum, a grass roots organization which works to promote family centered education policy on the local and state level in Nebraska, is perplexed by administrators and policy makers who ignore the behavioral science and continue to push education agendas that are destructive. She asks, "So if learning isn't the real agenda, what is?"

It's hard for parents and community advocates like Vosik to continue to have faith in the sincerity of educational leadership, to do so requires excusing the damage being done to young minds as the result of well intentioned ignorance rather than willful neglect or utter stupidity. Public school parent Gina Miller, is astonished that there has been no positive change after years of parents "screaming" about their children's suffering. She wonders whether we will have to wait for study results tracking children who are pushed through the "new 'Cradle to Career' education push" before education leadership will be willing to change directions. I don't think Miller is alone in her intolerance for sacrificing generations to these illogical social experiments, she says, "It makes me ill and VERY VERY SAD!"

It is an increasingly prudent skepticism that prompts questions about the true motivations of these education "reform" agendas. I have my theories but they aren't easy to swallow for the general American public so I try to focus on persuading the public that our education system needs serious corrections to protect the cognitive health and emotional development of American children. However, the consequences of failure are so dire and the numerous voices of warning so thoroughly ignored that even the prudence of persuasion is called into question.

A prominent public administration theory of organizational reform written by professor
Albert O. Hirschman, in his book "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States," applies standard economic theory to the reform of state organizations such as school systems. Through his theory we can identify three basic ways that public school parents can exercise their influence to change the structural organization of public schools. One, they can be loyal and serve the organization from within in hopes that their influence can affect the organization, they can use their voice in internal protest and descent, or they can exit the organization.

Mothers like Brenda Vosik and Gina Miller are the kind of loyal reformers who have served their public schools, voiced their concerns, and exerted great effort to organizing other parents in hopes of promoting positive change. What parents like these dedicated moms are learning is that the school systems may be beyond internal reform. I also spent years of extraordinary effort attempting to effect positive change through loyal dissent, but what I saw this first hand when I worked in the public schools was enough to push me beyond loyal voice. In the end I concluded that the best way to change the institution was to exit it. I protested the failures of education with my feet and walked away. 

I now homeschool my children. The time I used to spend filling the holes and fighting the internal battles I now spend giving my children the kind of education I know is best. The rise in homeschool, online schools, and other alternatives has increased 61% in the last decade and if the trend continues across diverse demographics, as it is now, it may make a difference in education admins willingness to listen. Unfortunately, Hirschman theory applied to public school has its limits because there is a hard ceiling on the number of people who can exercise their reform power.

It isn't practical for a great many parents to devote significant time to loyal service or voiced opposition within their school systems, and exiting the public system is impossible for most parents, especially single and middle class working parents. It's one of the things that makes it so easy for the schools to continue to ignore the social and behavioral science, they have a captive student base.

As someone who was once a loyal participant in public schools, and who gave years of sincere effort to internal reform before walking away, I am often asked what changes would prompt my return. What are the structural changes needed to make classrooms healthy environments for proper educational development? Well the answer doesn't require more money, more technology, or more federal initiatives. It's simple. It takes true educational freedom and local control. Parents know what their kids need and what they want out of education. Every school doesn't need to offer the same product or method. If schools were a free market there would be a school for every need, every educational philosophy, for every family, and for every student. What is required is trust. Trust in parents to do what is best for their kids, trust in teachers, trust in innovation.

What kind of school would I want for my young children?

I think the schools having the most success and doing the least damage in elementary ED are ones that limit direct instruction to no more than 45 minute increments and allow for frequent unstructured movement in between instructional periods. The school day should be shorter for young children, the way in which school districts have increased the length of the school day, especially at the elementary level, has been damaging and unproductive.

In addition to reducing instructional time, my school of choice would integrate more artistic and tactile activities into learning and allow kids to learn through discovery and play. To do this the education model mustn't be too focused on testing standards and must find more creative and less invasive ways of assessing progress. Teachers must be trusted to freely use their talents to teach without tight bureaucratic hand cuffs.

At the very least!

Since educational freedom and local control is a tall order these days, one change that should be made immediately throughout the country is to eliminate federal and state initiatives that promote standardization. The expectations upon teachers to teach developmentally inappropriate material in developmentally inappropriate instruction methods under the constant pressures of high-stakes standardized testing is a destructive institutional design that must change if we are to hope for positive change.

Teach Them to Trust Themselves and Others

The Atlantic printed an interesting piece highlighting the freedom and independence small children enjoy in Japanese society and how their social relationships are impacted by a fundamentally different view of a child's place in their communities. An understanding of this significant contrast between how Japenese society and American society have grown up in this modern world could provide some insight into what we are doing wrong.

Most parents in American know instinctively that there is something terribly wrong in a community where so many parents feel uncomfortable taking their eyes off our kids for fear that something bad may happen to them. Many parents are often frustrated by a cultural assumption that young children can't be alone and desire for their children to experience a more independent childhood. What is most perplexing is that this intense concern for our children's safety seems to be particularly unique to America.

When I was a young girl we lived in Munich, Germany for several years. I remember those years as being carefree and liberating in contrast to childhood in the U.S. While in Germany my brothers and sisters and I could run free without our parents. I remember at 8 years old walking to the market with my Scottish friend to shop for dinner carrying a list from her mom. In contrast, just a few years earlier I remember me and my 5 siblings being picked up by a Kentucky police officer less than a mile from our home because we were picking roadside apples without our parents nearby. I remember the terror I felt. One minute I was happily exploring with my older siblings (the oldest was 9) and the next I was in a police station trying to calm down my little brother who was crying in terror while we waited for my mom to come get us. For me and my siblings those years in Germany were some of our happiest. We felt the contrast between the independence we had there and the restrictions of our American childhood.

The Atlantic article reports a reality so foreign to American kids that it seems impossible to imagine that kids in America could ever enjoy that kind of freedom. Like the Germany I remember as a kid, "in big cities like Tokyo, small children take the subway and run errands by themselves" which begs the question, why are kids as young as three safe in the streets of Tokyo but not in America's biggest cities? Could we make our city streets safer by changing the way we view childhood? 

"Japanese kids learn early on that, ideally, any member of the community can be called on to serve or help others... This assumption is reinforced at school, where children take turns cleaning and serving lunch instead of relying on staff to perform such duties..." This kind of early work responsibility is seriously lacking in American society today, and in many American homes, but it hasn't always been this way. America used to excel at raising hard-working independent children. It is not to late to return to that kind of child rearing that requires that children take "responsibility for shared spaces." Being American used to embody taking "pride of ownership." In Japan these ethics "extends to public space more broadly" and children who grow up learning to trust themselves and others become adults who trust the capabilities of children and look out for their welfare. Teaching children to trust in itself is self-fulfilling in this aspect and by teaching our children today that they can't trust in others we have severed the community ties that in the past protected children. Every child "out in public knows he can rely on the group to help in an emergency."

Some might say that considering the current cultural rot we can't give our children this kind of independence because there's just too much violence to be weary of, but accepting the premise that when people grow up trusting their surroundings and learning self-reliance and responsibility for themselves and others the natural result is a less dangerous and less violent culture, requires that we we begin to shift the paradigm now before it gets worse.  I believe we can begin to make our communities safer by changing the way we parent and educate our children.